The Christian County Sheriff's Department purchased more cars recently, but a dispute with the county auditor has kept them off the road.

The patrol cars need to be equipped, and the department has money to equip them, officials say, though the auditor is not letting go of the purse strings.

Why? The auditor and sheriff disagree over how the sheriff's department can spend its money.

The auditor says the sheriff's department is requesting money from the wrong parts of its budget. The sheriff's chief deputy said the auditor is being "heavy-handed" and slowing down department business, like repairing the jail's refrigerator and paying utility bills.

County commissioners stepped in to settle the dispute at a meeting Thursday morning, but Presiding Commissioner Ray Weter wasn't happy about it.

"We shouldn't even be having this discussion," he told the News-Leader, explaining that the auditor and department heads should work these disputes out on their own.

Still, Weter said he expects clashes between the auditor and department heads to continue.

That's why the commission recently adopted a policy that allows commissioners to decide which fund money will be drawn from when department heads and the auditor butt heads.

Weter noted that the county's auditor Lacey Hart can be an "overachiever."

"She's very detail-orientated," he said.

Weter said it's problematic when she tells the sheriff how to spend his department's money.

Spending in the sheriff's department has been in the headlines before — in May, former sheriff Joey Kyle pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $50,000 of county money through a local gun store.

Chief Deputy Lyndal Spencer was at the meeting on behalf of the sheriff and affirmed the department's commitment to keeping a clear record of all purchases.

Spencer said the sheriff appreciates Hart's diligence, but when taxes are being spent on patrol cars, those cars need to be put to use.

"We do not need to slow the process down," Spencer said. "This doesn't make sense."

The News-Leader reached out to Hart for comment Thursday afternoon. She said in an email that the sheriff's department often confuses the terms "funds" and "accounts." She referenced a state law that outlines the responsibilities of a county auditor, but didn't elaborate further.

Hart said she missed Thursday's meeting because she was in a meeting concerning a planned update of the county's accounting software.

This is not the first time Hart has clashed with the sheriff's department.

The size of sheriff's budget was a point of frustration and disagreement when the county drafted its 2016 budget — a process that Weter then said had a "lot of blood, sweat and tears put into (it)."

Hart had criticized the sheriff's budget, which increased from $4.6 million to $5.5 million; the sheriff's executive assistant said Hart was overstepping her bounds as auditor.

And prior to that spat, a former sheriff said in December that the county was "sitting on" more than a million dollars that could have gone toward equipment for the sheriff's department, but Hart was stonewalling the sheriff's department.